Youthful Martyrdom and Heroic Criminality: Aggression and the Formation of Youth Groups in Northern Nigeria

Conerly Casey, Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

Research Grant, 2000, 2001

---

In northern Nigeria there is a phenomenon of youth groups who, through communal ideologies and acts, both suffered and meted out physical and metaphysical forms of violence. I paid careful attention to: 1) ideologies of martyrdom, the forms of personal and shared suffering youths reported, and who they blamed for their suffering; 2) changing notions of personhood, respect, civility, social justice and revenge; 3) how and why youth groups solidified around common identities, and the identification of enemies; and 4) traditional and transnational influences upon youths’ integrations into religious political communities.

My plan had been to work with ‘yan farauta (traditional hunting bands), ‘yan tauri (youths protected through herbal, ritual medicine against weapons), and ‘yan daba (urban neighborhood gang members).

Such conflations, and the violence that accompanied them, were fomented by religious metaphysics of fear, discipline, growing anti-American sentiment, and the political use of identity within Nigeria.

However, during my stay, twelve states in northern Nigeria declared Shari’ah Law as their State Law, redefining the legal bounds of civility and criminality, enforced by newly formed youth groups of Hisbah. I took the relations of ‘yan daba and Hisbah as a central concern since, in Kano State, these groups enacted violence to force the immediate implementation of Shari’ah Law. ‘Yan daba and Hisbah conflated Islamic identity, security, and morality, projecting images and acts of terror, seen and unseen, as simultaneous weapons and justifications for their use. Such conflations, and the violence that accompanied them, were fomented by religious metaphysics of fear, discipline, growing anti-American sentiment, and the political use of identity within Nigeria. The conflations also affected youths’ personal identifications with Islam, and their felt exclusions at local and global levels.

In Kano State, visual experience in everyday life—the beards of Muslim orthodoxy, the baggy jeans and chains of ‘yan daba, and cultural adornments favored by non-Hausa Muslims and Christians—became linked to perceptual and somatic contact avoidances. Moral aesthetics and practices were strengthened by the inseparability of what is seen from what is unseen, or the world of spirits. Hisbah, while condemning aesthetics and practices that signified breaches in the demarcation between the worlds of humans and spirits, nonetheless reinforced the power of this relationship; they employed realist interpretations of Qur’anic scripture as “truth” to project visual/spiritual profiles of the “enemies” of Islam into popular consciousness. ‘Yan daba, non-Hausa Muslims, and Christians became threatening because they disallowed the re-enchantment of orthodoxy and its ability to function as collective memory and political/spiritual unity.

‘Yan daba violence, while necessary for the break with secular law in Kano State, was at the moment of violence, outside of Shari’ah Law, so that ‘yan daba (whose numbers have increased tenfold since 1991) have affectively broken with all law. Likewise, the Hisbah, or the scopic, enforcing tier of the Shari’ah Implementation Committee, declared informal Islamic “states of emergency” to justify their violence against nonconforming Muslims, Christians, and ‘yan Bori (adherents of a syncretic animist-Islamic religion); they, too, through violence have affectively placed themselves outside of Shari’ah Law.

Bibliography

1. Casey, Conerly. Identity and Difference in Today's Nigeria. In Workbook on Ethnic Conflicts. Vamik Volkan and George Irani, eds., forthcoming.

The Middle Eastern Military as a Factor in Domestic and Regional Conflict and Violence: A Case Study of the Iranian Army

Stephanie Cronin, History, University of London

Research Grant, 1999

---

The research project consisted of a case study of the political and social role played by the Iranian army in the recent history both of Iran itself and of the Persian Gulf region. Beginning with the collapse of the army following Riza Shah’s abdication in 1941, my research dealt substantively with the years of Muhammad Riza Shah’s power, and concluded with an assessment of the impact of its history on the structure of the Iranian army in the Islamic republic, its military effectiveness, and its political reliability. The project incorporated a strong comparative element and a discussion of the lessons of the Iranian experience for understanding and predicting the behavior both of the Iranian and of other Middle Eastern armies.

The case study aimed at drawing lessons from the Iranian experience regarding issues such as: under what circumstances armies decide to resort to force to influence the political arena; the impact of western military assistance; the nature and consequences of programs of weapons acquisition and the prospects for arms control; and the role played by military force, actual and potential, in regional relations.

It seems, firstly, that political tendencies within the Iranian army were always more variegated than has been assumed; that communist or Tudah party affiliations among individual officers or groups of officers were mainly significant as an expression of radical nationalism; and that elements comparable to the "Free Officers" of the Arab world may be identified in the late 1940s and '50s.

The research fell into three chronological periods: 1941–53, 1954–79, and post-1979. The first chronological period focused on the army as a factor in domestic Iranian politics and examined the interaction between army, shah and political opposition, beginning with an examination of the response of the officer corps to the deposition of its chief, Riza Shah, and the political impact on the army of the Allied invasion of 1941. The second chronological period of this research focused on the twin processes of the consolidation of Muhammad Riza Shah’s control over the army and the consolidation of his army-based regime’s control over the country. The third period examined the role played by the professional army under the Islamic Republic. The research has posited a number of conclusions, of which the most important may be summarized as follows. It seems, firstly, that political tendencies within the Iranian army were always more variegated than has been assumed; that communist or Tudah party affiliations among individual officers or groups of officers were mainly significant as an expression of radical nationalism; and that elements comparable to the “Free Officers” of the Arab world may be identified in the late 1940s and ’50s. Clearly, between 1941 and 1954, the most senior reaches of the officer corps contained individuals and groups possessing political ambitions that were independent of the shah, though not politically radical, and that the stifling of such tendencies as the shah consolidated his power was partially responsible for the army’s paralysis in 1977–9. Indeed, the measures employed by the shah to protect himself from any emerging military ambition resulted in the army’s political paralysis in 1977–9, and in its failure to generate an alternative leadership capable of replacing the shah but preserving secular nationalist rule in Iran, an idiom to which it had historically been wedded.

The research also argues that the army’s competence and effectiveness in its conventional military capacity was, and remained, problematic, and that, although Iran claimed a regional role based on military strength, this strength was largely illusory, as was demonstrated for example by the counter-insurgency operations in Dhofar in the 1970s. Furthermore it seems that considerable confusion resulted from a shift away from the army’s traditional role, of safeguarding internal security, towards regional concerns, while the regime yet continued to rely on the army to suppress domestic opposition, a task for which it was no longer being trained or equipped. The research has found that the army was a crucial vehicle for the replacement of British influence in Iran by US influence and that the shah was the most suitable candidate for facilitating the increasing US domination of the army, senior military officers themselves often wishing to distance the army from the US military missions and retain control more securely in their own hands. The “Americanization” of the army was, furthermore, one of the most important factors tarnishing the army’s nationalist credentials and ultimately discrediting the regime itself. The research has concluded that a professional army has survived the vicissitudes of revolution and war in Iran but that it has played and will continue to play a subordinate political role in the Islamic republic, and that mechanisms are in place to protect the regime from any military challenge.

Bibliography

1. Cronin, Stephanie (eds.)."Riza Shah and the Paradoxes of Military Modernizarion in Iran." The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921-1941. New York: Routledgecurzon, 2003.

2. Cronin, Stephanie "Riza Shah and the Paradoxes of Military Modernizarion in Iran." Oriente Moderno. forthcoming.

The Dynamics of Violence in Civil War: Evaluating the Impact of Ethnicity on Violence

Stathis Kalyvas, Political Science, New York University

Research Grant, 2000, 2001

---

My goal in this project was to investigate the assumption that ethnic conflict is associated with higher levels of violence compared to other forms of conflict, such as revolutionary wars. More specifically, I sought to evaluate whether and how ethnic violence in the context of a civil war is really different from nonethnic violence and estimate to what extent ethnic violence is really ethnic; for, ethnic violence is more than violence between individuals of different ethnicities.

The main obstacle in answering this question is methodological: comparing ethnic and nonethnic wars does not allow us to control for the multitude of factors that may be causing whatever differences we observe. In addition, it would be difficult to move from correlations to causal connections.

As a result, I chose to begin with a carefully designed paired comparison at the micro level, as a first step toward a broader investigation to be undertaken in the future. Having completed a microcomporative study of violence in about seventy villages of Southern Greece (the Argolid region) where the civil war took place within a homogeneous ethnic environment, I used the support of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to conduct a study of a region in Northern Greece that was similar in many respects to the southern one, but was ethnically diverse and polarized (the Almopia region). Fieldwork involving interviews and archival research was conducted in 2000 and 2001.

Insofar as I was able to isolate an independent effect of ethnicity on violence, I found that the two were inversely related: the presence of the ethnic cleavage tended to reduce the levels of violence, by acting as a deterrent under conditions of contested control.

The goal was to find out which of the following three outcomes were supported by the data: ethnic polarization causes (a) higher levels of violence, (b) lower levels of violence, or (c) has no effect. The results support strongly the third hypothesis, while also suggesting some support for the second one. The first hypothesis was rejected. It is important to emphasize here that these findings cannot be generalized to the universe of conflict, but constitute a first step toward more rigorous empirical and theoretical work.

More specifically, I found that violence was considerably less widespread in the ethnically heterogeneous northern region than in the ethnically homogeneous southern one. This cannot be accounted for by patterns of group interaction: ethnic isolation and animosity were real; however, they did not lead to mass violence. In fact, the ethnic cleavage appears to have had little independent effect on the dynamics of violence during the civil war. Factors related to the conduct of warfare (the resources of the rival sides, the level of militarization of the conflict, and the incumbents’ ability to move the population away from mountainous terrain and close to well-defended urban centers) appear to account for the relative absence of lethal violence. Insofar as I was able to isolate an independent effect of ethnicity on violence, I found that the two were inversely related: the presence of the ethnic cleavage tended to reduce the levels of violence, by acting as a deterrent under conditions of contested control.

My research suggests that the observed or perceived relation between ethnic polarization and violence may be the result of a selection bias; as we continue to study ethnic violence, we should take much more seriously into account overlooked factors such as the type of warfare and the resources of the combatants in addition to the nature of the social and political divisions, of which ethnicity is only one.

Competitive and Cooperative Behaviors among Forest Elephants in the Presence of a Limited Resource

Katy Payne, Bioacoustics, Cornell University

Research Grant, 2001, 2002

---

In early 2002, ELP (the Elephant Listening Project) collected data on the behavior of forest elephants in the Central African Republic’s Dzanga National Park. The field site is a large, mineral-rich clearing in the equatorial rainforest; it is a unique center of forest elephant concentration and also the site of much competition. This fact in combination with team member Andrea Turkalo’s ability to recognize roughly 80 percent of the estimated three thousand elephants individually (the result of her twelve-year research project here), made Dzanga an ideal place for a detailed study of dominance and aggression in elephants.

ELP conducted focal surveys to measure the incidence and intensity of aggressive interactions among elephants in a particular (“focal”) area of the clearing that contained preferred drinking pits and was thus the site of easily defined competition. In twenty-three focal surveys, 553 aggressive interactions were documented. The same events were recorded acoustically on seven autonomous recording units surrounding the clearing. These are small, self-contained recorders capable of storing months of audio, and are time-synchronized via GPS signals. From this composite recording, elephant calls were later located on a computer-generated map. Simultaneous video recordings enabled us to attribute many located calls to the elephants who made them. This includes infrasonic calls, those calls made below the range of human hearing.

Most of the relationships revealed support the hypothesis that elephants use aggression to establish and/or maintain their place in a dominance hierarchy which can be roughly defined in terms of age/sex classes, as follows: musth males>adult males>subadult males>adult and subadult females>juveniles>infants and newborn calves. Aggressors tend to target individuals in the same or lower rank than themselves. This finding holds true both in cases of active aggression and in displacements. The latter are situations where there is no contact and no visible threat on the part of the displacer. This strongly suggests that elephants are aware of their relative status in a preestablished hierarchy, and that this awareness persists in the absence of aggression.

Overall, we found a positive correlation between the frequency of aggressive acts and the numbers of elephants in the clearing. This suggests a relationship between aggression and resource limitation and/or crowding and/or the contagion of social excitement.

The 553 aggressive acts documented in twenty-three focal surveys varied in intensity and nature. Overall, we found a positive correlation between the frequency of aggressive acts and the numbers of elephants in the clearing. This suggests a relationship between aggression and resource limitation and/or crowding and/or the contagion of social excitement.

The negative correlation between the number of displacements per survey and the ratio of adult and subadult males to other elephants in the clearing suggests that members of these dominant age/sex classes can suppress aggressive interactions by members of other less dominant age/sex classes. The presence of older males seems to provide a stabilizing force.

High-frequency calls (screams and trumpets) were correlated with aggression, all trumpets being made by aggressors and most screams by objects of aggression. Most of the screams were associated with tactile active behaviors (stabs, kicks, jousting, and shoves) and nontactile active interactions (chasing, trunk-shooing and defense of hole). It seems that high-frequency vocal responses can indicate not only the presence but also the intensity of aggressive acts.

None of the contact interactions resulted in obvious serious injuries. It is clear that dominance is quite different in nature from active aggression and violence, at times serving to abort or mediate potentially injurious interactions. In the above analyses we included a set of mildly aggressive interactions labeled as displacement. Without physical contact, these interactions appeared to reinforce elephants’ awareness of a dominance hierarchy. We postulate for forest elephants that although the cost of maintaining a rigorous dominance hierarchy includes such mildly aggressive interactions, their presence effectively precludes greater losses to the individual, family, and society.

Social Violence and Religious Conflict in Late Medieval Valencia

Mark D. Meyerson, History and Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

Research Grant, 2003

---

My HFG-supported project explores violence within the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities of the kingdom of Valencia (Spain) as well as violence between these communities in order to shed new light on the transformation of Spain between 1300 and 1600 from a land of three religions into one uniformly Catholic. I focus on the kingdom of Valencia because it had the largest Muslim population in Christian Spain and a substantial Jewish population. I regard its history as paradigmatic for developments elsewhere in medieval and early modern Iberia. The archival sources for the Valencian regional history, moreover, are especially rich. This project is largely based on the records of various tribunals: criminal justice, bailiff general, governor, Royal Audience, and Spanish Inquisition.

Methodologically, the project is in many respects a form of anthropological history. Viewing violence as integral and specific to particular cultures and as a form of social discourse, I am interested in analyzing the forms, rituals, and meanings of verbal and physical violence perpetrated within each religious community. The practice and control of violence in each community were distinct, as a result of particular kinship structures, economic pursuits and competition, relationship with the authorities of the Christian state, and, of course, historical experience. While this anthropological approach is intrinsically valuable for interpreting the violent behaviors of medieval Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and thus for providing a new understanding of their mentalities, the project’s comparative dimension elucidates the differential acculturation of Muslims and Jews to the dominant Christian culture. Among the Christians, for example, the ritual of “assaulting the house” of one’s (Christian) enemy as a means of dishonoring him or her, was widely performed. (This involved several armed males bursting through the doors of a rival’s house—understood metaphorically as a woman’s body—beating up, in a controlled fashion, the men or women within, and sometimes scarring a woman’s face.) I found that Jews engaged in such household assaults when feuding with coreligionists, and that, for various reasons, Jewish forms of violent status competition came increasingly to resemble those of Christians. The conquered Muslims, in contrast, perpetuated modes of feuding with their own rites of violence and manhood, which were understood to be peculiarly “Moorish.” Hence they did not perform household assaults in the Christian manner, though they did violate an enemy’s domestic space in other meaningful ways (e.g., the abduction of unmarried girls).

Their status anxiety was fed by the authorities' public criticism of them for shameful and un-Christian mingling with Jews and Muslims; they resolved it, I argue, through collective and cathartic violence against the other religious communities.

In exploring the intensity of violence among Christians, especially among the laboring-class Christians who composed the mobs that attacked Jews and Muslims, this study shows that Christians suffered from a high degree of status anxiety, which they expressed in their punctiliousness about questions of “honor.” Their status anxiety was fed by the authorities’ public criticism of them for shameful and un-Christian mingling with Jews and Muslims; they resolved it, I argue, through collective and cathartic violence against the other religious communities. I regard the choice of baptism or death that Christians offered their Muslim and Jewish victims as an expression of the ambivalence with which they viewed them. Finally, by examining the violent practices and feuds of baptized Jews (Conversos) and of baptized Muslims (Moriscos), I show that the Conversos were increasingly contesting honor and status with Old Christians and thus assimilating, whereas Moriscos persistently directed their violence mostly at members of their own ethnic group and thus paradoxically enhanced Morisco distinctiveness and resistance to assimilation. In other words, by viewing violence as integral to and constitutive of culture, I am able to show, at least in part, how and why Muslims and Jews, and later Moriscos and Conversos, followed such different paths in regard to Christian society and culture, and why Spain took the shape it took over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Bibliography

1. Meyerson, Mark. Of Bloodshed and Baptism: Social Violence, Religious Conflict, and the Transformation of Spain. forthcoming.

2. Meyerson, Mark. "The Murder of Pau de Sant Martí: Jews, Conversos, and the Feud in Fifteenth-Century Valencia," In "A Great Effusion of Blood"? Interpreting Medieval Violence. ed. O. Falk, M.D. Meyerson, D. Thiery. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Political Violence, Military Conflict and Civil Unrest in Palestine: The Palestinian Police, the Fatah Tanzim and the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”

Nur Masalha, Political History of the Middle East, Saint Mary's University of Surrey

Research Grant, 2002, 2003

---

This research project was originally undertaken with the aim of examining the roles played by the military and civilian police forces of the Palestinian Authority, and the popular militias (in particular the Fatah Tanzim), during the current uprising (“Al-Aqsa Intifada”) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was particularly intended to focus on the likely future trajectories of these organizations, the factors determining the dynamics between them, and the various options for their future evolution. The project outlined a number of research objectives relating both to the Palestinian police and to the popular militias and raised a number of hypotheses about the relationship between these forces; between these forces and the Palestinian Authority; and between these forces and the local population.

The research began by examining the pre–Al-Aqsa Intifada period, focusing on the post-1993 state formation in Palestine and the roles played by the Palestinian Police and Security Forces in the pre-Intifada period between 1994 and September 2000. The work then proceeded to examine the causes for outbreak and subsequent militarization of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the rise of the Fatah Tanzim, and the emergence of the Palestinian popular militias in 2001 and 2002.

During the course of the research, the situation in Palestine changed dramatically. Throughout 2002 and 2003, the project continued to monitor ongoing developments on the ground as they affected the research, and to modify the goals accordingly. Despite the deteriorating security situation in Palestine, which made visits to many parts of the country difficult, field trips to Jerusalem, Ramallah. and Bethlehem were extremely useful in conducting interviews and collecting primary and secondary material in Arabic and Hebrew.

The police as an institution engaged in very little armed resistance. Most of the resistance put up by the Palestinian population was led by the militias (Fatah Tanzim, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad).

Of particular importance was the strategy demonstrated by the Israeli government under Ariel Sharon, of semipermanent military reoccupation of the West Bank, which seemed to be aimed at the very destruction of the Palestinian Authority itself. The research attempted to measure and assess the effect of the ongoing reoccupation on the ability to respond of the Palestinian security forces and the militias, and concluded that the Israeli assault on the official Palestine Police (the destruction of police stations and police facilities throughout the occupied territories), contributed to the rise of the popular militias and armed units, including those of the Fatah Tanzim, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade and militant Islamic organizations (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad).

During its reoccupation of the West Bank, the Israeli army targeted the security organizations of the Palestinian Authority, particularly the police, and police posts and police stations were repeatedly destroyed and the police killed or arrested in very large numbers. The police as an institution engaged in very little armed resistance. Most of the resistance put up by the Palestinian population was led by the militias (Fatah Tanzim, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad).

The decreasing ability of the Palestinian Authority to function, on the security or any other level, resulted from the Sharon government’s underlying strategy of preventing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. This in turn led to the development of a degree of skepticism among the Palestinian population about the Palestinian Authority’s future and the future of the two-state solution in general.

Among the specific new factors which the research identified as key are the following:

a) the tendency of the popular Palestinian militias to look to the example of the Lebanese Hizbullah and its tactics in confronting the Israeli army in south Lebanon;
b) the rise in levels of support for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade among the population;
c) the close collaboration and a certain degree of merging between Islamist and nationalist forces and between these groups and the official police;
d) the occasional adoption by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which had a secular nationalist tendency, of the tactic of suicide attacks which had hitherto been confined to Islamic groups;
e) evidence of an increasing traumatization of Palestinian society (see points d and f.);
f) the participation of Palestinian women in armed attacks in both secular nationalist and Islamist armed groups, including in suicide attacks;
g) the serious implications of the Brigade’s activities in terms of undermining the Palestinian Authority.

Hardships and Violence against Street Children in Sub-Saharan African Cities: Understanding Street Children and Street Life in Urban Tanzania

Joe L. P. Lugalla, Anthropology, University of New Hampshire

Research Grant, 1999, 2000

---

One of the most recent social problems dominant in cities in sub-Saharan Africa is the rapid increase in the number of unsupervised children living or working on the streets. Most of these children, for various reasons, have either abandoned or have been abandoned by their families and have migrated to urban areas in order to earn a living. Their rapid increase, how they survive and grow up as young adults, the hardships they experience, and the types of violence they endure, raise concern and calls for immediate attention. Our study set out to examine the dynamics of street children’s lives in Dar-es-Salaam. The aim was to advance knowledge and understanding of the situation of poor children who live independently on the streets of sub-Saharan African cities by addressing the questions posed above. We explored the factors that push children onto the streets and examined the nature of their street life and how they cope with the situation. We also examined the hardships and violence they endure and how this affects their health.

Contrary to the conventional belief that street children are young criminals in the making, our study found out that most of these children are pushed onto streets by societal factors beyond their control.

The findings of this study suggest that rural poverty, abuse, and the scourge of HIV/AIDS act simultaneously in manufacturing a great number of helpless children who resort to street life. While on the streets, street children experience a rough life associated with the lack of basic necessities of life like shelter, food, health, education, and others. Both adult urban residents and law enforcement institutions regard them as criminals and most of them experience general violence and, for girls, sexual violence tends to be the routine of life. The study argues that street life has tremendous negative consequences on children’s health. Contrary to the conventional belief that street children are young criminals in the making, our study found out that most of these children are pushed onto streets by societal factors beyond their control. Street children are the neediest children in urban Africa and also the least assisted. The study concludes by detailing down-to-earth short- and long-term interventions that focus on addressing rampant rural poverty and controlling HIV/AIDS. We also recommend the formulation of policies that seek to improve the welfare of vulnerable social groups like women, street children, and children who have been orphaned by AIDS or other factors.

Bibliography

1. Lugalla, Joe L.P. and Colleta G. Kibassa. Urban Life and Street Children's Health: Children's Accounts of Urban Hardships and Violence in Tanzania. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2003.

Neuroendocrine Consequences of Dominance and Subordination

Randall R. Sakai, Biology, University of Pennsylvania

Research Grant, 1997

---

The visible burrow system (VBS) provides a unique model for studying complex behaviors in rat social groups in a seminaturalistic environment. In this setting, dominance is associated with the expression of species-typical aggressive behaviors. The studies in our proposal allowed us to explore the basis of these behaviors at levels not feasible or ethically permissible in human subjects. Specifically, we have assessed multiple behavioral, physiological, chemical, and neurological parameters in rats before, during and after they live in the VBS and experience hierarchy formation. Our studies are designed to discover specific neurochemical and hormonal signaling pathways linked to both dominant and subordinate behaviors. Once these correlates are identified, it is our long-term goal to then develop and use experimental interventions in an attempt to modify offensive/aggressive behaviors of dominants and defensive behaviors of dominant and subordinates. In addition to novel insights into the biochemical basis of aggressive behavior, these studies should provide us with a wealth of new and important information on the physiological consequences of prolonged exposure to subordination, a stressor that is of particular relevance to humans. Because this kind of psychological stress has been associated with an increased incidence of both mental and somatic illnesses, a greater understanding of the neurochemical and endocrine correlates and consequences of stress should lead to more effective therapeutic approaches to stress-related disorders.

Using a visible burrow system to investigate social interactions, we have found that subordinate status is positively correlated with plasma stress hormone levels but negatively correlated with plasma androgen levels.

Our recent studies using the VBS have documented behaviors in the subordinate rats that include reduced social, sexual and aggressive activity, changes in sleep cycles, and weight loss associated with lower food intake. This spectrum of behaviors is characteristic of human symptoms of chronic subordination, loss of job and job security, and clinical depression. This experimental preparation therefore provides an important and unique animal model for the analysis of the behavioral, neuroendocrine, and neurochemical changes that accompany the process of becoming subordinate as well as those involved with the development of dominance.

Using a visible burrow system to investigate social interactions, we have found that subordinate status is positively correlated with plasma stress hormone levels but negatively correlated with plasma androgen levels. We have also determined that a significant subset of subordinate animals become nonresponsive to novel stressors. These findings are consonant with what has been reported for humans living under conditions of chronic stress situations. We have therefore begun to investigate possible neural correlates of the subordinate state, and have recently found that animals living in the visible burrow system have changes in neuron morphology. These data are important for several reasons. First, altered neuron morphology is indicative of chronically altered neuronal activity and connectivity. Second, the brain region in which we have found these changes, the hippocampus, is known to be involved in responding to and learning about emotional situations. Finally, the data are consistent with what has been reported using different models of experimental stress. Of primary interest to us is that when the data were analyzed by social status, the dominant animals were observed to have the greatest degree of neuronal remodeling, with the subordinate animals having significantly less. This key finding suggests that the reports of neuronal restructuring that have been observed in other experimental models may in fact reflect different underlying endocrine and neurochemical mechanisms. It further suggests that a more sophisticated animal model, such as the visible burrow system, will be necessary for uncovering and ultimately understanding the complex changes that occur in the brain when individuals are stressed in naturalistic ways. At this point, it is unclear if the changes observed are harmful to the animal in and of themselves, especially since it is the dominant animals that display the greatest neuronal change. Our studies continue to build upon our previous research by determining whether these social stress–induced changes in the brain are reversible or not, and whether changes in neurogenesis or neurodegeneration may produce pathological situations to these animals.

Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa

Adam Ashforth, Political Science, Baruch College, City University of New York

Research Grant, 1998, 1999

---

The HFG research and subsequent book, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, is an attempt to think about the implications of pervasive spiritual insecurity for the postapartheid democratic state in South Africa. It seeks to chart the contours of danger and uncertainty arising from people’s relations with invisible forces acting in the world, to examine how awareness of these dangers and uncertainty about how to manage them shapes everyday social life. It also raises questions about the ways in which spiritual insecurity complicates the project of democratic governance. The raw material upon which it is based is mostly drawn from my experience of life in Soweto during the 1990s, the decade when apartheid died and democracy was born in South Africa. Shadowing every page is the imperative of thinking about the cultural consequences of the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

For most South Africans, certainly the vast majority of those who call themselves “Africans,” everyday life is shadowed by an apprehension of dangers commonly summarized under the general rubric of “witchcraft,” a term describing the putative capacities of persons to cause harm to others or accumulate illicit wealth and power for themselves by means of mysterious invisible forces. In African communities, illness, death, accidents, poverty, and all the other manifestations of unhappiness in human life cause people to wonder whether witchcraft is at work. When these misfortunes are surmised to be the result of witchcraft, they are perceived as being injuries, harms deliberately inflicted by others. People living in a world of witches, such as most Black South Africans, devote an enormous amount of money, time, and energy to protecting themselves from witchcraft and trying to undo the damage caused by witches. Witchcraft is a fact of life. It impinges upon every aspect of life creating a condition I describe as one of spiritual insecurity.

Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa is organized into three sections. The first deals with the sociology of insecurity in Soweto and examines how issues of spiritual insecurity relate to other dimensions of insecurity such as those arising from poverty, violence, and disease. It charts some of the ways changes in social life in Soweto over the past decades such as increasing socioeconomic inequality, declining community solidarity, and the AIDS epidemic have played into, and played out as, matters of spiritual insecurity. It describes some aspects of life in a world with witches, particularly the presumption of malice in everyday community life, which constitutes what I describe as a negative corollary of the doctrine of ubuntu, or African humanism.

I examine some aspects of the transformations of spiritual power affording protection to individuals, families, and communities that have taken place in this part of the world as a result of Christian evangelization and changes in family life and political structures that have tended to undermine ideologies of "ancestorship."

Part One ends with a meditation upon the implications of believing in witchcraft at the start of the twenty-first century and argues that contemporary Sowetans generally approach issues of witchcraft with a sense that it is better not to believe in witches. Part One also argues that issues of spiritual insecurity in a place like Soweto should be approached from the perspective of “not-knowing,” that is, a recognition of the confusion that surrounds these matters in everyday life rather than a presumption of coherent “systems of belief” shared by communities of believers.

Part Two begins a discussion of the ways in which people in contemporary Soweto interpret and attempt to manage the invisible forces they experience as acting upon their lives. The central point this section considers is the nature of the various agencies that people interact with, agencies inherent in substances, objects, images, persons, and spirits or other invisible entities. When people worry about witchcraft in Soweto, they almost always worry about other persons interacting with substances known generically as muthi, and they seek protection from these dangers by reference to invisible beings such as ancestors, spirits, and deities (predominantly the triune Christian God) as well as other material substances also known as muthi.

The central aim of Part Two is to develop an understanding of how statements about witchcraft and other forms of harm involving invisible forces can be taken as plausible accounts of the world. This involves consideration of the ways people interpret the agency of substances and what I am calling the dialectics of health and harm implicit in the category muthi. Substances with agency, however, are not the only sources of harmful invisible forces. In Chapter Seven I describe the dangers inherent in polluting substances generically known as dirt, particularly those associated with death. Following these discussions of the dangers inherent in substances, I examine some aspects of the transformations of spiritual power affording protection to individuals, families, and communities that have taken place in this part of the world as a result of Christian evangelization and changes in family life and political structures that have tended to undermine ideologies of “ancestorship.” Part Two ends with a meditation upon some of the vulnerabilities and capacities of invisible aspects of the human person such as copying a fetus’s animating spirit to create a monster, “hijacking the mind” of a person in order to lead them to their own destruction, and gaining control of another’s innermost desires.

Part Three raises issues relating to spiritual insecurity as they manifest themselves in the domain of the state and present challenges for democratic governance. Principal amongst these is the problem of justice arising from the fact that witchcraft is a form of harm deliberately inflicted upon an innocent victim. I consider recent calls to reform the laws relating to witchcraft dating from the colonial era so as to recognize the reality of witchcraft, a reality treated as axiomatic by most Africans. Efforts to bring witchcraft cases into the formal legal system, however, run into irresolvable problems of evidence since the action of witchcraft is secret and known only to perpetrators and diviners. But divination involves forms of knowledge that are incompatible with the evidentiary principles underpinning the modern state.

Bibliography

1. Ashforth, Adam. Madumo, A Man Bewitched. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2000.

2. Ashforth, Adam. Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Striving in the Path of God: Discursive Traditions on Jihad and the Cult of Martyrdom

Asma Afsaruddin, Classics, Notre Dame University

Research Grant, 2001

---

My research project is focused primarily on a specific genre in Arabic-Islamic literature known as fasda’il al-jihad (“excellences or merits of striving/struggling [in the path of God]”). The prophetic and other kinds of reports contained in this literature will be adduced as evidence in favor of the thesis that the understanding of jihad in the Islamic tradition as primarily “armed struggle/combat” is a late one, which developed out of an earlier matrix of multiple and competing meanings of the term. Furthermore, the cult of martyrdom it engendered developed in response to specific historical and political circumstances. Among these circumstances are the continuing border skirmishes with the Byzantines in the Umayyad period (661–750), the Crusades and the Mongol attacks from the 11th century on, all hostile encounters which prompted the rise of this hortatory literature to galvanize a perhaps-reluctant populace to stave off external threats to Islam.

The Qur'an, the earliest document in Islam, alludes to a multiplicity of meanings for the locution "al-jihad fi sabil Allah," (lit. "striving/struggling in the path of/for the sake of God").

The reasons for propounding the relatively late and historically conditioned development of the notion of jihad as primarily armed combat that creates martyrs for the faith are compelling. Most importantly, the Qur’an, the earliest document in Islam, alludes to a multiplicity of meanings for the locution “al-jihad fi sabil Allah,” (lit. “striving/struggling in the path of/for the sake of God”). Furthermore, the Qur’an has no term for a martyr nor a well-developed concept of martyrdom, which is a necessary corollary to the notion of jihad as religious military activity. The term shahid that is understood today to refer to a martyr occurs only in the hadith literature; in the Qur’an it refers exclusively to a legal or eye witness. Proceeding from this thesis, my study will go on to contextualize the evolution and invocation of this hortatory discourse; that is, to explore why and when this literature was produced, what were the external and internal influences shaping the contours of this discourse, and what bearing does that have on tracing the complex semantic and ideological history of the term and functions of jihad. Considerable attention will be paid to sources such as the related “excellences of patience” (fada’il al-sabr) literature, which documents “alternate” views of jihad as quietism that emphasizes cultivation of the trait of patient forbearance in the face of trials. This approach promises to considerably nuance and transform our current state of knowledge concerning early and competitive perspectives on jihad.